My Top 5 Covers of June 2025
Colour and atmosphere, galore!
Half-way through 2025, already? No way. Time just flies when life gets busy and book after book gets released and read, huh? I’ve already seen so many good covers grace screens/shelves that were released earlier this year or has been revealed but the books won’t be out for a while (like January 2026!)
Interestingly, I have been seeing fewer minimalist book covers that became highly trendy early last year but the keyword is: t’. It came, and it went (not for good, just died down, you know).
Now, without further ado: my top 5 for the month!
Note: presume that I have not read any of these books unless I’ve indicated as such. Any observations made about the story the covers represent and its quality are only based on the synopses and the cover. Also, none of these are in any particular order!
#1
Book Cover Designer: Ray Shappell (Instagram | Website)
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming by David Wallace-Wells
The Grimrose Girls by Laura Pohl
Dorothy Must Die series by Danielle Paige
Book Cover Illustrator: Tran Nguyen (Instagram | Website)
Off With Their Heads by Zoe Hana Mikuta
Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame by Neon Yang
The Storm Crow duology by Kalyn Josephson
Having read the book, I find it charming that the FMC’s blue hair is, in Nguyen’s more minimalist, graphic alternate style, splashed all over the background, as if it’s her triumphant “I’M HERE!” declaration. Nguyen hadn’t used this visual style before with Lim’s books, but perhaps the more graphical look of this style better connects to the FMC’s occupation of being a painter and focus more on her.
#2
Book Cover Illustrator: Audrey Benjaminsen (Instagram | Website)
Lucy Undying by Kiersten White
The Turn of the Screw (limited edition; The Folio Society) by Henry James
The limited edition Gothic Horror collection by Litjoy Crate
Ethereal with its soft shading and gradual shading and eerie with the cool, cold light and greyscale palette, Benjaminsen knocked it out of the park with this gothic fantasy book. Fans of Tran Nguyen’s style but want more gothic/horror-esque visuals can surely turn to Benjaminsen’s covers, for both contain similar graininess that can be found in scanned physical artworks on paper. A big shout out to the type because it screams ‘old fashioned fairytale’.
#3
Book Cover Designer/Illustrator: unknown
Love the play with implied form as we see pencil shavings used to frame different silhouettes along a flower like a family tree! It’s so clever at subtly hinting at the story’s focus on two generations of a family and their pencil company. Having read the story, I see the bright yellow as a signifier of what that pencil company meant to them (hope) and how, generations later, it was a way for long-lost family members to be reunited.
#4
Book Cover Designer & Illustrator: Julia Lloyd (Website)
Vicious by V.E. Schwab
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney
I can’t place what art movement this cover is evoking (closest coming to mind are Cubism, Abstract) but it does support the story’s most crucial setting—the circus— with the bright colours and red and white stripes evoking classic circus imagery. The shift from the more 3D-looking face of the woman on the left down to the bottom right where the 2D tiger is such an interesting way to guide the eye through the composition.
Do you know what art movement this cover could belong to?
#5
Book Cover Illustrator: Anastasia Haberling (Instagram)
It’s clean and rooted in dualities—warm (orange) and cool (blue), light and dark, negative space and positive space. For a fantasy cover, it takes a low-key route that, for me, is refreshing. The experimental title arrangement reads indie to me, and from the looks of its small publisher, it lines up.
That’ll be all for this month’s top 5 round-up!
What do you guys think of these covers? What are the books you’d put on your top 5 for June 2025?